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Bill Good Marketing Gorilla Prospecting Strategy Recovery Part I NINE PROSPECTING STRATEGIES FOR A TOUGH MARKET The first of a series of White Papers on rebuilding.

A Bill Good Marketing White Paper

This white paper discusses the issues with prospecting in 2009. → What Is The Gorilla CRM™ System, and Why Do I Need It? → Gorilla® Prospecting Strategy → Mass Marketing Strategy → Enhance Your Relationship with Your Prospects

By Bill Good, Chairman Bill Good Marketing, Inc.

Table of Contents The Situation 2009............................................................................... 3 What Is The Gorilla CRM™ System, and Why Do I Need It? ............ 4 Gorilla® Prospecting Strategy ............................................................ 5 Mass Marketing Strategy .................................................................. 13 Enhance Your Relationship with Your Prospects .......................... 16 More Information ............................................................................... 18

Gorilla Prospecting Strategy

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The Situation 2009 Consider these three facts.

1)

Leading up to the meltdown, when asked “How are you prospecting?” you most likely would have answered, “Referrals.”

2)

Your referrals are down. Chances are you have not yet launched a prospecting campaign.

3)

Many subscribers to the Bill Good Marketing System® are level or even up. They followed advice and always maintained at least one additional prospecting channel. This enabled them to replace evaporated assets with new ones.

Consider three more facts:

1)

The collapse of the financial markets has created legions of unhappy investors.

2)

Many older workers have already or soon will lose their jobs forcing them into retirement. They urgently need to make correct decisions on their retirement funds.

3)

The largest generation in history is getting older. There is much talk that they have to continue working. But many will not, indeed cannot.

Retirement will occur. Î Assets will roll out of 401(k) accounts. Î Companies will be sold. Î Money will be in motion. Î Therefore, the big question is—

Will you get your share of this wealth? To put my offer in context, let’s answer the question …


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What Is The Gorilla CRM™ System, and Why Do I Need It? CRM means “client relationship management.” It is a type of program. We named ours “Gorilla.” It’s a big, powerful program. But we went beyond a program. We built a system. SYSTEM means: an integrated whole, all parts functioning as a single unit. The Gorilla CRM™ System, then, is a computer-based, client marketing, prospecting and office management system. You need it today because you badly need leverage. There is a tremendous amount of work to do to rebuild your business. If you are spending your time deeply mired in handholding, service, and computer stuff, you will not have the time to pursue an aggressive rebuilding strategy. In this white paper, I will talk about: prospecting. That’s what this industry, and especially you, need a good dose of. If you have questions about the other parts, call us at 1-800-678-1480 or visit www.billgood.com. For a video presentation, go to www.billgood.com/video.


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Gorilla® Prospecting Strategy The Basics At the foundation of our Gorilla® prospecting strategy is this truth: Many, if not most, of your new clients will come from people you have been in contact with for some time and who have come to feel comfortable with you. So, based on that truth, here’s the strategy we developed: Build a list of people you want to do business with, who know and respect who you are and are open to the possibility of doing business when the time or opportunity is right. The “list” becomes your list of prospects. For Gorilla purposes, a “prospect” is anyone who has responded or been referred that you would like to do business with. If your prospect file is filled with people who once upon a time were interested and who never take your calls, well, you really don’t want to do business with them. So they are NOT prospects. They need to be discarded. You must strictly apply this definition of “prospect.” You need more of them. If your prospect file is clean, then all money and time spent in developing your prospects becomes invaluable. This latter option is, of course, the Bill Good way. So keep your eye on this concept: Your prospect files are your future clients. Don’t let anyone come into that file that you do not want to do business with. Don’t let them stay in if you or they no longer care. Your prospect file is like a garden. Weeds get in it. If you don’t pull them out, they will crowd out the flowers and vegetables.

Optimum Prospect File Size From our research the optimum size file is a few hundred names, probably around 800. It’s not thousands. It’s not “a few.” It’s hundreds. We discovered this by analyzing our Gorillas’ Weekly Stat Reports. People who built a file in this range—and properly managed it!—routinely hit their new client/new asset goal. As you approach “critical mass” of around 800 names, and if you have properly maintained your prospect file, it becomes easier and easier to open your target number of accounts.


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For instance, using our 90-day no-contact script, you should set appointments with 1 out of 8 prospects. If you do the math, you (or preferably a member of your team) should talk to 12 prospects a day. In a week, that’s 60 contacts with your prospect file. That’s 7 appointments a week. Even if your closing rate is a bit sour, that’s two new clients a week … if you want to grow at that rate. So, if you build a list of 800 prospects and relationships who want to hear from you and whom you want to help, you should be opening your target number of new clients.

Building or Re-Building Your Prospect and Relationship File Now that you know what goes in this file, you have to build it. This is called prospecting. We have nine strategies built into the Gorilla CRM to generate your prospects. Some of them will become clients quickly. Others need to be developed.


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The “yellow” strategies are always the first ones. The “first of the first” is REAL REFERRALS.


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Real Referrals A “real referral” is a name volunteered by a client or prospect as someone needing financial advice.” You cannot ask for a referral. If you ask, you won’t get one. You might get a name. You are sitting with a client. We'll call him Bob. You have recently signed up for a 12-step program and learned a script, which you decide to try. YOU: We are looking for _______________ (Describe your ideal prospect). Who do you know who fits this description? BOB: Uhhhh. Well, you could call my Uncle Farnsworth. Come on now. Did you get a referral? Or did you just extract a name? Here’s another gem: You are in Bob's office. YOU: Let me explain to you exactly the kind of client I am looking for. Like you, he or she is a successful business owner. They're looking to retire in the next 5–10 years, and they need a plan to get the equity in their business into a retirement account. Let's go through your contact list. You tell me a little bit about each of your associates. And then we'll settle on two, but not more than three, of what we call "preferred recommendations." BOB: (Obviously uncomfortable. Sweat is running down his sides and back.) Well…uh…mmmm…..I guess you could call Adam Ames. He’s my lawyer. He owns his own business. But he might be a little younger than you want. You could call him. In each case, did you get a referral? Absolutely not. You got a name. When you call it, the prospect is offended that his “friend” gave out his name. You should NEVER ask for referrals. Instead, to generate more real referrals, we will show you how to “promote referrals.” "Keyword: promote. In our dictionary, that means: “gently and persistently remind your clients that you value and accept their referrals.” Our objective for this promotion is to create a referral consciousness. When a situation arises where a referral to a financial advisor would be appropriate, your client thinks of you and has your name and phone number on their person. When you come to the Gorilla Training Seminar®, you will learn several ways to create this referral consciousness, some of them quite magical. BGM clients who meticulously implement our Real Referrals strategy usually add about 10% of their assets annually from client referrals. (See below for referrals from strategic partners.) Vital Data: Even when referrals are providing you with your target number of new clients, it is IMPERATIVE you maintain at least one other channel. Just look at what happened to your referrals when the bottom fell out of the market. That’s why we have the other eight strategies. One or two of them will be right for you. Let’s look at each strategy in turn.


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Old Prospects About three months after attending your Gorilla training, you have completed your “Find the Money” campaign. You have a Computer Operator. You are promoting referrals. It’s time now to round up your “Old Prospects.” Some of these are worth keeping. Most are not. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we have you run The Old Prospect Card Campaign. The purpose of this Campaign: To get rid of people you don’t want and who have no interest in hearing from you again anyway. What’s left after this purge? Î Hot Prospects—willing to start the sales process now Î Red Cherries—interested, qualified but need some “development” Î Green Cherries—interested but qualified at a known later date Î Info Leads—people who specifically request to remain on your mailing list These are, in a word, prospects. They have responded and you know enough to want to do business with them. Once again, some will become clients in the short term. Others need to be “developed.” We use The Old Prospect Campaign to “seed” your prospect file. It normally produces enough names to get you up and running.

The Relationship Marketing Strategies The second group (light blue boxes on our chart) are our Relationship Strategies. Here is the truth: If you do not have enough relationships or do not use them correctly, you are either a mass marketer or you are not hitting your new client and asset goal. We have four relationship marketing strategies. You implement them one at a time. If in the course of implementing these strategies, you achieve your goal for new clients, you stop. But if relationship marketing does not get the job done, you must mass market.

Strategic Partnerships A “strategic partnership” is a relationship with a non-competitive financial professional who believes in you and needs your expertise for him or her clients just as much as you believe in and need his or hers. We have crafted a process for creating strategic relationships that work. They are balanced in that each partner helps the other. We have also developed the programming that enables you to track referrals to and from your partners. We can also keep track of commitments they have made to provide services to your clients. By such meticulous tracking, you can take appropriate steps to ensure each of the relationships is, in fact, balanced. Here is a table of what one could reasonably expect, on an annual basis, from different types of relationships. Gorilla Prospecting Strategy

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Relationship

Clients expected per year

Estate planning attorney

2-3

Residential Real Estate agent

5-10

Property and Casualty agent

5-10

CPA

2-3

Tax preparer

5-10

Total

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Clone Best Clients To “clone” means “create identical copies.” The cloning technique we use is an introduction. An “introduction” is a specific request to an excellent client to introduce you to someone you know that the client knows. In the Gorilla Training Seminar®, you will learn certain research techniques that will enable you to zero in on who your client most likely knows. Then you will learn the “BGM Introduction Procedure” which happens to also be the way I broke into the financial services industry as a complete outsider in 1980. There are four principal cloning strategies we employ. Î The Birthday Lunch Î Client/Guest Educational Seminar Î Event Marketing Î Business Owner Introduction For each of these strategies, we have developed a defined procedure, invitations, and management tools so that introductions generated can be appropriately followed up. Any one of these strategies, when implemented, can generate enough new business to supplement referral marketing. Depending upon the depth of your client relationships, you may not need to pursue any other strategies. Here are some expectations based upon best practices of current system users.

Procedure

Clients expected per year

Birthday lunch

1 per luncheon

12-50 per year

Event Marketing

2 per event

10-20 per year

Client Educational Seminar

1 per event

10-20 per year

Business Owner Introduction

1 per client

10-20 per year

Total

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42-110


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New Identity with Business Contacts A "business contact" is someone you know through a business affiliation that you would like to do business with, but who does not know you well enough as a financial professional to feel comfortable if you solicit his or her business. We use the "New Identity Campaign" to build the professional identity. After the campaign has been running a few months, your new identity will be strong enough for you to call your contacts and invite them to lunch. After the first few months ramp-up period, a properly maintained business contact list should produce 5 to 10% in new clients each year.

Social Connections Campaign On a recent survey, 59% of the advisors indicated “networking” is an important source of prospecting. The only reason networking is not completely effective and more widely used is due to: THE SOCIAL TABOO AGAINST SOLICITING BUSINESS FROM PEOPLE YOU KNOW. It is a fact that people like doing business with people they know. You may have spent years cultivating your network. Some of the people you know would love to do business with you . . . Î If they were fully aware of what you do and; Î If you can get past the social prohibition.

You really can’t turn to your fellow Rotarian who owns 17 Taco Bell® franchises and say, “By the way, Bob, what’s your liquid net worth excluding the value of your home and other properties?” They would burn your Rotary flag and undoubtedly have a small ceremony in which your Rotary pin is torn off your coat before you are thrown out into the cold for violating the dreaded taboo on soliciting business from people you know. So, if you can’t ask people you know for their business, how on earth do you develop business with people you know without getting drummed out of your social circles? They have to come to you, don’t they? To encourage your social connections to step forward, we have developed the most unusual approach you have never heard of. I named it “The $50 Million Wilson Campaign.” It’s named after Dick Wilson, a BGM System User who started mailing some of our “feel good” letters to his wealthy connections. They LOVED THEM.

So he kept doing it. Over a five year period, Dick added about $50 million to his asset base from an original list of 78 social connections. And he added another $100 million from people he added to his list. When he ran out of our “feel good” letters, he wrote his own. He has kindly shared these with us so we can share them with you.


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A "social connection" is someone you know socially, through religious, charity, family, neighborhood, or other social affiliation, whom you would like to do business with but who would be offended if you solicited their business directly. The “Wilson Campaign” sends only "feel-good" material and never solicits. Over a period of years, you should open between 25 and 50% of the people you place on the list. Dick’s percentage was much higher.

If you are active in your community and make it a point of adding 3–4 new connections a month, I would expect you to bring in $10–$20 million a year.


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Mass Marketing Strategy The only reasons to use mass marketing campaigns are:

1)

Your strategic partnerships, referrals, introductions, and people you know are not generating enough new business.

2)

You want to crack into a new network and don’t have the connections to do so.

To help you with either of these situations we have seminar campaigns, cold calling to business campaigns, and mass mail campaigns.

Seminar Campaigns You may have heard someone say, “My area is seminar’d out.” Most likely, that notion is promoted by someone doing extremely well producing seminars. He or she has a good thing going and your participation in that market is not wanted. Here is the truth.

1)

Seminars are tougher today than ever.

2)

To be profitable, they must be done by “the book.”

3)

We wrote the book on seminar marketing.

You will find parts 1 and 2 of the “the book” at www.billgood.com/successzone. There you will find these White Papers: “The Seminar Success Zone” Here you will learn stats you must achieve for your seminar to be profitable. If even one stat, such as your “show-up rate” is out of the zone, the other stats have to be unrealistically high. “Producing Great Seminars: What You Have to Do” In this white paper, you will learn about the tools we have created to help insure your success. These tools include an introduction to our library of scripts and invitations, our time-saving calling system, and very importantly, post-seminar management. If you are, have been, or want to produce a seminar, run, don’t walk to:

www.billgood.com/successzone Part 3 of the “the book” is in the Campaign Center. This section is reserved for BGM System Users.

Here you will find:


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The Seminar Promotion and Production Campaigns. These are the add-ins you will download and install on your Gorilla software. They enable you to manage multiple seminars. Bill’s Seminar Invitation Strategy. Here you will find 40 tested seminar invitations. These include client/guest invitations, client appreciation invitations, invitations for business owners, estate planning, and retirement planning. The Report Card Strategy. Question: Once you get them to the seminar, how do you get them to the office? Answer: You get everyone to fill out a “Report Card.” Our strategy includes your “before and after” scripts, the seminar timeline, and the Report Card. As a plus, when your attendees have filled out your report card, they have also given you permission to call them. Response Processing. What you do after the seminar is at least as important as what you do before and during. Attendees must be tracked, no-shows contacted, thank you letters sent, and it’s all ready for your computer operator. All he or she has to do is follow the steps of the checklist. And much much more.

Cold Calling While cold calling has taken its lumps over the past several years, it is a viable and very successful method to develop a business if done correctly. There are three variations we have built into the Gorilla CRM™ System. 1) The Message Campaign. This is a campaign for highly resistive lists, such as doctors. 2) Mail/Phone. Used largely for business owners and corporate executives. We send a letter and follow it three to five days later with a call. 3) Phone/Mail/Phone. In this campaign, we make a cold call to a business group, or someone at home not registered on the DNC list. We offer them some information, and if they are interested, we call back.

Direct Mail We have these outstanding direct mail campaigns.

The “Frustrated” Campaign. This is a campaign for investors who have seen their investment portfolios shrink and their returns evaporate. They are frustrated. Respondents send you an “Information Request” asking you to call.

The Elliott Campaign Like the energizer bunny, the “Elliott Campaign” keeps going and going and going. This is designed primarily for people who sell individual stocks, bonds and CDs. With more and more advisors taking back the management of their funds, this campaign is enjoying a renaissance.


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The Mother of All Retirement Planning Prospecting Campaigns “The Mother,” as we call her, is a focused campaign intended to locate prospects that will likely have a substantial 401(K) rollover. No matter what the economic climate, people do age. Some may work longer. Others will be forced out, through layoffs or health. Some respondents to this campaign are ready to talk now. Obviously, you set an immediate appointment. Others are not ready. They roll directly into “The Pre-Retirement Campaign.”

The Pre-Retirement Campaign 1) 2) 3) 4)

If you want more than your fair share of retirement dollars, you have to do these things. Identify the projected retirement date for everyone you talk to. Insure those dates are recorded on your Gorilla software. Run the Pre-Retirement Campaign.

This campaign is intended to position you as THE RETIREMENT PLANNING EXPERT. Every couple of months, you send information on retirement planning to your clients AND prospects who are at least 55 years old and not retired. Periodically, these people pop up on a report for a phone call because we both know RETIREMENT DATES ARE FLUID. A client’s plan to retire in June 2011 can be abruptly changed with a layoff, health issue, or even an inheritance. Six months before the retirement date, another campaign kicks in: “The Retirement at Hand” Campaign. This has one objective: Get the appointment.

The “New Identity” Campaign “New Identity” is a drip campaign for people you know through a business affiliation that you would like to contact but they do not know sufficiently well what you do to feel comfortable if you solicit their business. It is true that people like doing business with people they know and trust. But they have to know what you do. You may be on friendly terms with the owner of the chain of dry cleaning stores. But as a dry cleaning customer, you cannot ask about his finances. So over a period of some months, you send certain letters and financial information. After a few months, a trigger event will occur and you will know it’s time to start harvesting this list.

The $50 Million Wilson Campaign This is a campaign like you’ve never heard it. The Gorilla System User who crafted it from some pieces we had, created a $150 million book of clients in five years. It is designed for your social connections, those people you know socially or through religious, charity, community, school or affinity groups. The reality is: you cannot ever ask your social connections for their business. They have to approach you. The Wilson Campaign positions you so that when your social connections experience a financial change in their life, they will ask for your help. Gorilla Prospecting Strategy

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Enhance Your Relationship with Your Prospects Guess what? Despite occasional appearances, the Gorilla program is not designed to enrich the postal service. It is designed to generate business. Let’s go back to our fundamental truth about prospecting: Many, if not most, of your new clients will come from people you have been in contact with for some time and have come to feel comfortable with you. So before business, comes the relationship. And, to create relationships with people who have only tenuously responded, we boldly assume that prospects are clients already. This is just “assumptive selling,” hopefully a key tool in your kit. The strategy for enhancing the relationship is very simple. It’s called the Client Retention Formula, but let’s see how it applies to prospects. Î Provide good investment advice. You certainly can provide good investment advice to prospects. If you have learned enough about the prospect to want to do business with them, you surely know something about what they own and/or what they want. This is why we keep information on Interests, Investments, and Positions. It allows you to send information that your clients and prospects are likely to find of interest. To help you with this, we have 2,300 letters and articles in The Letters Library®. Î Provide great service. You cannot do a lot here until you establish the client relationship. Then, using your Contact Management Strategies, you can precisely follow up when you say, and deliver exactly what you promise—hallmarks of great service. Start building the reality that you do what you say you will do. If you tell a prospect, “I’ll send you the info today,” well, do it today. If you say, I’ll call you Thursday, then do it! Î Send every prospect a letter about something s/he is interested in. This is the core of monthly dripping. We’ve had this nailed for over a decade. Make sure a few messages every year are “values letters,” including one or two patriotic letters. These build your “good citizen” brand. Î Make certain every prospect gets a phone call every 90 days from someone in your office. This is the 90-Day No Contact Campaign run on prospects. It not only generates business now, but also helps develop your personal reputation as a caring professional. Very importantly, in order to run this campaign on anyone who has registered with the “Do Not Call” list, you must either open an account within 90 days or you must get signed permission to continue calling. As part of “the System,” we have a set of procedures and letters designed to get that critical permission. Î Use lots of etiquette letters. Whenever you set an appointment, confirm it. Always send a personal email afterwards, thanking them for their time. If you hear of an illness, send a condolence letter. And so


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on! With these letters, you are building your personal brand one additional way. Î Send every prospect and spouse a birthday letter. A primary goal of any interview you do should be to get the birthdates of your prospects. Gorilla will then turn on its Birthday-Letter machine and they will NEVER get a duplicate birthday letter. Once again, we are helping you build your personal reputation, which is the foundation for the relationship that precedes opening an account. Î Invite your prospects to attend your educational seminars. Every single letter to prospects should have a copy of your Client Educational Seminar Schedule. Even if they never show up—but some will!—look at what you are asking them month after month: “Is your advisor doing this for you?”

Critical Mass Once again, Gorilla is NOT a mailing program. Mail is just ONE of the tools we use to build identity. Specifically, we are building these three identities: Î You as a good citizen Î You as a caring individual Î You as an investment professional All three count, probably in equal measure. You build these identities in person. But since you might go months between personal contact, you need to sustain them with written communications and the 90Day No Contact Campaign. As you build these identities, some business will just appear. People will call you unexpectedly. Some will even show up at your office. At some point, with a certain mix of prospects, relationships, and, if necessary, leads generated from new campaigns, you will hit critical mass. In this state, you will comfortably achieve your prospecting target. We recommend you shoot for at least 50 new clients a year, but your target may be fewer (bigger) or more (smaller) new clients. It all depends on you, your market and your style. When you hit critical mass and start getting ALL your new business from referrals and people who just show up—be very, very careful to avoid a mistake I have seen over and over again. Your tendency will be to focus on harvesting only. You will stop building the prospect and relationship files. And sooner or later, just as night follows the day, your pipeline will dry up and then you will have that awful sinking feeling that you have to do it all over again. So let me again pose and answer the key question about prospecting:


Q.

When should you prospect?

A.

Always!

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More Information Bill Good is Chairman of Bill Good Marketing, Inc., based in Draper, UT. His firm creates products and services designed to help financial advisors create the time and money to pursue their other goals in life. For more information, go to www.billgood.com. For the latest information about our products and services, please contact us at 800678-1480. Ask for Jill Maples. You can also visit us on the web at http://www.billgood.com/. And be sure to check out a few of our other White Papers.


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© 2009 by Bill Good Marketing, Inc. All Rights Reserved Patent pending. The products and services referred to herein are either trademarks or service marks, or registered trademarks or registered service marks, of Bill Good Marketing, Inc. This information represents the current view of the author as of the date of publication. This report represents 185 advisors who responded to the invitation to participate in the survey. Because of the rate at which conditions are changing, the author reserves the right to alter and update his opinion based on new conditions. This White Paper is for informational purposes only. Copyright permission is hereby granted to make copies and distribute to Registered Representatives in the United States and Canada. Bill Good Chairman Bill Good Marketing, Inc. 12393 South Gateway Park Place Draper, UT 84020 800-678-1480


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